Author: Michael Vogt

ExamSoft Worldwide produces the Examplify examination software used by many law schools and state bar examiners. This software is a secure essay exam word processor. Pepperdine School of Law allows students to use this software to take their midterm and final law exams. If you plan to use your laptop computer to take your exams, Examplify is required. The majority of students currently take all or some of their exams via this program.

IMPORTANT: RETURNING USERS – If you have not taken an exam during the current term, you may need to re-register your software for the current academic school year. To do this, simply follow the same steps for installing the program for the first time. Login to the Examsoft website listed above, and click on “download” to accept the new academic year’s user agreement and download Examplify. Follow the prompts for the installation and when prompted, accept the new academic year’s student agreement again within the program and then follow the remaining prompts to install the latest version of Examplify.

Before attempting any exam, we highly recommend downloading and running a ‘Mock Exam’ within Examplify. This will help ensure the software is functioning properly on your computer prior to exam day.

You may have noticed the warnings advising you not to upgrade to Mac OS X Version 10.14.1. What you might not know is, this is an annual ordeal when it comes to taking midterms with Examplify. Every year Mac rolls out a new OS update. And every year, we advise against updating to the new OS until our exam software Examplify can release a compatible update that allows Examplify to work on the new system.

Once the update is available, Examplify will push it out to your computer and alert you that an update is available for install the next time you log into Examplify. Please remember, you MUST install the update in order for it to work on your new OS during finals.

Examplify is supported on the latest 4 versions of Mac OS. So this means that if you are running an OS that is 4 versions old, and a new OS is released then yep, you guessed it, that list bumps up by one and your old version is now 5 versions old and the new Examplify will no longer work on your now

updated OS. This means before the new OS release you need to either upgrade to a later version right or hope you don’t have an exam before ExamSoft can release a new update to make it compatible with the newest OS. Otherwise, you will find yourself in the unenviable position of being stuck on an outdated version that is no longer supported for use with Examplify, but not able to upgrade to the newest version because it isn’t compatible yet.

To update your Mac OS, please visit your app store. To upgrade to the latest version of Examplify, just launch Examplify and install the update when prompted. Stay tuned to LawTech to be notified when it is safe to upgrade your Mac to the newest OS.

We’ve all heard the stories, perhaps you’ve even had nightmares about it happening to you. You’ve stayed up for the past 36 hours preparing for an exam, you’ve checked and re-checked your notes and then checked someone else’s just to be sure you hadn’t missed anything. You’re ready for this, you’re going to own this exam. You sit down and open your laptop, open Examplify, and then… everything goes dark.

No your computer didn’t just transport you into a galaxy-sized black hole, but the alternative is almost equally terrifying and just as inescapable… you’re going to have to use a Bluebook. As you sit listening to your classmates happily typing away at what sounds like 1000wpm, you wonder to yourself… “where did I go wrong?” Your mind frantically searches for any trace of what could have caused this tragedy, when suddenly, you vaguely recall ignoring a post on Lawtech that warned you of this very scenario. A creeping inclination begins to gnaw away at the edges of your consciousness… Could this all have been prevented if you had only read it?

The good news is, this was all just a horrifying Hypo. And yes, the possible outcome is easily avoidable.

Just turn off your Antivirus software before you open Examplify.

Various antivirus programs have been linked to several computer disabling issues when used with Examplify. These issues include black screens, computer freezes, and crashes, or my personal favorite, desktop background changes to an Examsoft icon. These issues can occur intermittently and unpredictably so even if you have taken a mock exam without incident, you may still encounter a problem during an actual exam. Don’t let this happen to you!

Just remember, before you begin your next exam, and believe me you have no idea how painful this is for a tech guy to say, please turn off your antivirus.

As you may know, there was a previous security issue with Mac TouchBar enabled laptops that prevented them from being used on numerous state bar exams during the February bar. Many law schools also banned them from being used on exams this spring. However, Pepperdine still allowed TouchBar laptops to be used but required the TouchBar be manually disabled by IT staff. Fortunately, the latest version of Examplify from Examsoft has resolved this issue and all TouchBar enabled laptops are now permitted to be used on exams without needing to disable the TouchBar in advance. Examplify will now automatically disable the TouchBar when the exam is launched and re-enable it once the user exits an exam. This will prevent any potential exam integrity issues so all users are cleared to take finals on their Mac TouchBar enabled laptops.

Fortunately, the latest version of Examplify from Examsoft has resolved this issue and all TouchBar enabled laptops are now permitted to be used on exams without needing to disable the TouchBar in advance. Examplify will now automatically disable the TouchBar when the exam is launched and re-enable it once the user exits an exam. This will prevent any potential exam integrity issues so all users are cleared to take finals on their Mac TouchBar enabled laptops.

We wanted to make all usersaware of a few tips for taking exams with Examsoft’s Examplify.

1.Be sure to Close Spotify Before Taking an Exam– Students at other law schools have reported Examsoft issues caused by having Spotify open on their laptop when they opened Examplify. The Examplify program attempts to lock your computer into the exam environment. However, Examplify sometimes cannot properly lock down the Spotify program which can cause your computer to bog down or freeze in the middle of an exam… so for the sake of your own sanity, please make sure you quit the Spotify program before you open Examplify.

2.Restart your Computer BEFORE Finals– Sometimes we fail to realize how long it has been since the last time we restarted our laptops. Restarting your laptop will help speed up the performance of your computer, as well as install critical updates. This will help your machine operate faster during finals, especially when working within a program like Examplify. Restarting will also close installers and other programs that may be running in the background and slowing down yourlaptop’s performance. There is nothing quite as maddening as having your machine take forever to load your exam when you are already in a hurry, or delay uploading your answers once you have completedthe test.

3. Turn off your Antivirus – I know, I know… you should never turn off your antivirus, except when it comes to Examplify. Antivirus has been known to cause a whole host of issues with Examplify, from black screens, to screen freezes, it’s all antivirus fault. Any antivirus can trigger this and it can even be intermittent, so even if it worked fine during a mock exam, it might not work in the real final. So just to be safe, disable it for the exam, but then re-enable it afterwards.

3.1 Turn off Automatic Updating – If you are using a PC, turn off the automatic updates feature, as it could trigger an update or even an update warning window during your exam, which could cause Examplify to crash mid-exam.

4.Spell-Check– This is a very handy tool during exams. However, the spell-check in Examplify doesn’t workquite the same way as spell-check in Word. First, it will not automatically visually indicate spelling errors so you won’t see the little red squiggle line under misspelled words like you would in MS Word. Second, you must actually open the spell-checker tool for it to find misspelled words. You must then go through each misspelled word, one-by-one, to find and fix each error. You can however, “change all” if you have misspelled the same word multiple times, so that could save you a few clicks. The spell-checker will also offer recommended words that you can select to replace the misspelled word with. This can be a tedious process, especially when you are pressed for time, so be sure to save several minutes at the end of your exam to go through the Spell-Check process.

The tool is located in different places on PCs and Macs. On PCs the spell-checker is available by simply clicking the small “abc” icon in the toolbar above your essay. On Macs, the spell-checker is available by clicking on the “Spell” tab on the right-hand navigation menu. For a full list of directions on how to use the spell-checker tool, please visit the Examsoft Spell Check Directions site for PC and Mac. If you don’t see the tabs or icons mentioned above, spell-check might have been disabled for your exam by the instructor.

5.Word Count – Word count is a helpful feature in Examplify and is absolutely necessary for certain exams. However, it can be tricky to use sometimes. First, it’s not automatically available. You must locate the tool by clicking on the “Stats” tab located onthe right side of the screen in Examplify. If you have used it once already during this portion of the exam, you will need to select the “Recount Essay Statistics” button to update the word count. This tool will help you keep your essays within your instructor’s specified parameters for the exam.

Microsoft officially released its newest operating system, Windows 10, on July 29. This is a free upgrade for existing Windows users. Until recently, we advised against upgrading as it was not compatible with the current version of Examsoft’s Examplify product, which you will use for your exams at Pepperdine Law School. However, Examsoft has released an update to their software that makes it compatible with Windows 10. So if you feel like upgrading, you are now free to do so.

Please note that in order for Examsoft to work on your computer, you must download the most recent update of Examplify from the Examsoft website. For more information on how to update to the latest version of Examplify, please visit our Examplify update page.

Are you planning on using ExamSoft’s Examplify exam taking software for final exams this Fall 2014 term? Did you recently upgrade to Mac OS X 10.10, Yosemite? If you read our last post, you were hopefully waiting to install Yosemite until it is supported by ExamSoft. Remember, DO NOT download any new version of Mac OS until you have verified that it is supported by ExamSoft.

Good News, your wait is over! Yosemite is now supported by ExamSoft. You can upgrade to the newest Mac OS Yosemite starting and the new OS will be compatible with the latest version of Examplify.

Before attempting to take any exams, please verify that you have the latest Examplify, and as always, work through a Mock Exam to ensure proper use of the software before your exams.

For more information, and to see what others are saying about this and other exciting ExamSoft announcements, please visit the ExamSoft Community.